Early in the year found us still recovering from the unexpected passing of my brother, gone too soon.

We embarked on a wonderful road trip to Arizona. At times the drive was tedious, but mostly it was fun, and adventurous, making stops at quirky Route 66 icons. The trip culminated in a two months stay in Tucson doing much more discovery of museums, scenery, food and way too much fun to list. Then, a different route home to see more of the U.S.. We collected memories on this trip that I will cherish forever.

The rest of the year was fairly nondescript, more house remodeling and getting settled in… wondering will we ever be done?

The year ended with the not so surprising death of my father. My stepfather really, but the only father I ever knew. He had dementia and his health had been failing for awhile. His death lead me down the road of remembering good times…. and bad times. There were many of both.

Along with his death came the realty that, no doubt due to the distance, I had also lost so many people who I thought were closer to me. In our move north I knew there would be a fair amount of out of sight out of mind losses, but I was not prepared for the number that would disregard me now. That has been hard.

So what does this year bring? Of course I don’t know, but what do I want it to bring?

I haven’t made a real resolution in years, just to do better and be better was my mantra. It’s not a bad plan but certainly not very definitive.

Well I have decided it’s time to go through 30+ years of recipe collecting and digitize.

As any organizer will tell you every project starts with identifying a problem. And I have a problem: the enticing picture of a cake, adorable drink with a garnish on the rim or mouthwatering looks of a barbecue found in the pages of a magazine screams for me to tear that recipe out because I’m going to make it someday. But of course it’s lost in a pile, and if I ever do think to make it I would never be able to find it. While much of my newer recipes lie in Pinterest I would still like those tried-and-true ones to be easier for me to find.

I did some extensive research on different apps available for recipes. I looked at 18 of them, there were more but I had to draw the line. After reading about them and reading the reviews on them I landed on 7 to try.

Wunderlust

OneNote

organizeat

copy me that

recipe organizer

Recipe Gallery

Pinterest

While they all had some interesting features, OneNote almost had me with their colorful tabs, I mean really what type A personality doesn’t love an array of colored tabs! I landed on Recipe Gallery as my favorite. It has the cross references, sharing ability and notes that I was looking for. While it is the only app that had a fee, $2.99, I think it will be worth it. Although, it is the first time I have paid for App and it wasn’t easy to bite that bullet! Lol

Next step was to sort through and ditch recipes that screamed: “who are you kidding You’re never making this”. I was rather surprised at how many duplicates I found while doing this sort also. I initially got rid of around 150 recipes.

Next came triage; sorting the mess into workable piles of like categories; I had 12.

Then it was just a matter of doing it, lots of picture taking, and I even added personal notes regarding changes I may have made, special memories a recipe may have had or who it came from.

This was my work station

Since I’m a big Pinner on Pinterest I tried to keep my recipe book to recipes that are tried-and-true and keep Pinterest for recipes I’d like to try, or dream of being able to make. With that being said, once I started entering things into my recipe book I ended up eliminating even more. This project only took a week, but I was motivated to get it done and spent five hours a day on it and I ended up with about 200 recipes in the app.Since I started with 564 (yes I counted them) that’s a lot of eliminating.

I have used it several times and am very happy with my choice, now onto my next organization project, because believe me, there’s more!

I noticed today that I haven’t seen the hummingbirds in a while. They are gone for the season. I guess it’s time to take down the feeders. I wonder, when was the last time I saw them? I think I saw them Friday, or was it Thursday?

There are so many things that happen that you just don’t realize that it’s your last time. When was the last time I got out of bed and didn’t hurt?

Sometimes you do get to know it’s your last time doing something and you are able to plan that memory accordingly. Such as your child’s last band concert, or last high school football game, or your last day in your home before you sell it.

Alas, there are some you just can’t plan ahead for. Some innocuous last times, such as, I wistfully think, when was the last time I weighed that. I sure wish I would’ve realized then that I wasn’t fat.

Then there are some life changing last times; I wish I would’ve known that was the last time I would speak to my brother before he passed away.

It really makes me think how much we need to cherish every minute of every day because you just don’t always know that it’s the last time of something!